I promised to give an update on the listening session I attended this past week at my neighborhood high school. The Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) offered these sessions after a high school student was shot outside a school a few months ago.
The evening reminded me how smart young people are when it comes to understanding what they need to learn and succeed. Students at the five DMPS high schools identified four areas where the district and the greater community needs to focus moving forward: safety, student health and well-being, belonging, and community/family engagement. We were asked to serve as critical friends and offer feedback on the student brainstorming.
My feedback asked the district to help the students identify behaviors on the part of students, teachers, administrators, and community alike that would lead to improvements in these four areas. I also asked the district to be sure to provide a report to the community about how this work is advancing. So many times school districts go out to their communities for “listening sessions,” and then never return to share what changes the district made because of the community feedback they received. We’ll see if DMPS follows through.
And now to the news of the week…
Facing a Teacher Shortage, Texas Considers a More Rigorous Teacher Certification Exam (The Texas Tribune)
I don’t know if this move is very smart, making it harder to become a teacher when ½ of the nation’s teachers are thinking about quitting. But that’s not why I picked this article out of the news feed this week. Since we are facing a teacher shortage, why not see this as an opportunity to identify, recruit, and train a new type of learning leader – the learning coach? It seems like folks just might not be interested in becoming teachers any longer. A learning coach career, paying between $80,000 and $100,000 a year, while having 15-20 students under your leadership, might be attractive enough to grab the attention of a new group of energetic, committed, and talented individuals. Oh, and when it comes to learning coach certification, that would happen when a master learning coach gave the “thumbs up” that the beginning coach was ready to lead learning. No exam needed.
Surprise Finding Suggests Reading Recovery Hurts Students in the Long Run (EdWeek)
According to the article, Reading Recovery was considered one of the breakout stars of the federal Investing in Innovation program, after a massive randomized controlled study found the literacy program helped struggling 1st graders gain significant ground in reading. But new findings from a longitudinal follow-up of the program suggest that by 3rd and 4th grades, former Reading Recovery students performed significantly worse than their peers who did not participate in the program.
Ouch!
Here’s what I learned a long time ago from folks a lot smarter than I am when it comes to teaching and improving reading skills. Learning to read and then reading to learn takes time, and it takes a talented learning leader. There is no program that can replace talented reading coaches and time spent on reading practice. The problem in most schools today, especially secondary, is that we don’t spend enough time practicing reading, with trained reading coaches, during the traditional instructional day.
“The Hate is Just Too Much”: Threatened by Neighbors and Trolled on Social Media, Minnesota School Board Members are Quitting in Record Numbers (The 74)
This is nuts. Why would someone want to serve on a local school board, arguably the lowest rung in our electoral system? Especially during these times when you will most certainly be criticized on your mask-wearing position (no matter what it is,) questioned about your opinions of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, and asked to stay in a meeting until 1 A.M. debating the cost of hot dog buns! There is a much better way to oversee learning than school boards, and still have the “public” in “public schooling.” More on this topic in this coming Tuesday’s ABPTL column.
New Research Point to “Loudoun County Effect”: When Parents Clash Over Ideology, Kids’ School Performance Suffers (The 74)
Ohio State professor Vlad Kogan released a study recently that showed student math test scores decrease following high-profile controversies that occur within school districts regarding cultural issues. Those scores decrease even more when districts experience effects resulting from debates specifically focused on race and evolution.
There’s an old management model called “activity avoidance.” The model warns that most human beings will use their time anyway possible to avoid the activity they have been asked to do. Adults are renowned for their “activity avoidance” inside of school districts. Many would rather do anything other than work on improving student learning. It’s easier to talk about “critical race theory” and “to mask or not to mask” than to work on getting kids smarter and stronger. And here’s what makes it tough for those adult learning leaders that don’t fall into this category: there are just jenough adults on most campuses that engage in “activity avoidance” that it makes the job damn difficult for those who don’t.
And now we have evidence that that type of behavior hurts kids’ learning.
Want Students to Become Better Problem Solvers? Then Teach Them to Fly Planes and Drones (EdWeek)
In Rockville, Maryland, pairs of Magruder High School freshmen are gathered at the controls of eight Redbird flight simulators, high-tech machinery with foot pedals and control panels that are used to train private and professional pilots how to take off, land, and maneuver aircraft safely under normal and dangerous circumstances. The free and relatively new curriculum – designed by the nonprofit Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Foundation and used mostly in high school career and technical education programs – is spreading quickly across the country, growing from use in 29 schools in 17 states in 2017-18 to 322 schools in 44 states for the 2021-22 school year. Forty percent of the kids in the program are students of color and 21 percent are females.
Do we have any idea how much talent lies outside of schools when it comes to helping our young people become smarter and stronger learners? What would happen if “the school day” became an opportunity for kids to work with talented adults from industries beyond our aviation example above?
This could all be possible, but it would warrant a drastic shift in the way we ask our young learners to use their learning time.
Farewell to Ross Ramsey, Executive Editor and Co-Founder of The Texas Tribune
I don’t pretend to be a great writer, but I do like to read great writers. In my opinion, Ross Ramsey is a great writer. I’ve been reading Ross’s columns in The Texas Tribune since 2010, and I’ve learned a lot about a lot of things just by reading Ross. I’ll miss him.
Being the good Texan he is, Ross gave his readers a sort of “pep talk,” in his last column. He started his encouragement discussing public education. This is what Ross wrote:
“Texas has 5.5 million kids in public schools. They need the tools to continue the work, and the pandemic set them back. Teachers can tell you that, and parent, and so can the student themselves. It’s an urgent problem, and ought to be at the top of the list. The future is at stake.”
Couldn’t agree more Ross. Thanks for your hard work.
Have a great weekend, and we will talk Monday. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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